I know they typically start the day after Halloween, but I submit that it’s still too early. I don’t want to see commercials where people are eating at Wendy’s with Christmas decorations in the background. I don’t want to hear the Home Depot guy talking about how this time of year, every room of the house is a project while showing people hanging wreaths on their front door. And I especially don’t want to be reminded that some people have had their gifts on layaway since June. Those people are out of their minds.
I hearby ban all Christmas commercials until Black Friday and move Walmart and Best Buy a few more notches up my shit list for being the prime offenders.
We have a station that plays 24 hour Christmas music from Thanksgiving until Christmas. Last year they played The Monster Mash and then went right into White Christmas.
Either they were playing the Monster Mash three weeks too late or you meant to say Halloween.
We’ve had a “Santa” themed lottery radio spot going on for at least three weeks now.
If I ever win the lottery I’m going to buy a radio station and then start playing Christmas music at midnight on Dec 25th and then play it nonstop for a year. Then NOBODY will ever beat me at that stupid “whose the first radio station” game.
Yeah, I re-read that and realized it was confusing. Normally they started the Christmas music after Thanksgiving. Last year they started it on November 1st.
ETA they did that two years ago and got enough complaints that they didn’t do it last year or this year.
I used to look forward to Christmas when I was a kid, and when I was a young adult, and even later. Then the barage of ads started to get earlier and earlier and people started using “the holidays” as an excuse not to get their work done or not respond to business requests. The relentless advertising kind of takes the shine off the whole affair for me. Your senses get bludgeoned with the overload, and anticipation/interest takes a nosedive. Sort of like seventeen different versions of “Law & Order”. Hey, if one is a success, let’s saturate the market until people are ready to slit their wrists.
I want to wait to put up our decorations until two weeks before Christmas, this year. Since I leave them up till New Years Eve, three weeks just seems like plenty.
Husband disagrees. He wants them to go up right after Thanksgiving. Hmmmm.
Oddly enough, the old tradition of Advent starts on the Sunday between Nov. 27 and Dec. 3; close to the “Black Friday” kickoff of the season. I agree that anything earlier is too much.
I realized last month as I was shopping and cleaning and decorating for a halloween party and halloween costume that halloween has become my Christmas - Christmas is just a dark, cold time to get through (albeit with chocolate).
I have to get my dvr recordings all straightened out so I don’t have to watch another commercial until January.
I’ve pretty much stopped watching TV except for the local news in the morning. Between Netflix and Hulu, I can’t keep up anyway, and with the computer hooked up to the living room TV, it’s not like I’m compromising couch time. I’m looking forward to missing all of the holiday commercial crap, much as I missed all the campaign ads.
I hate, hate, hate that all this Christmas crap starts before Thanksgiving.
I saw a blue and purple LED-illuminated lawn peacock at Lowe’s this weekend. They also had a pig (light-up, I think) with gently flapping wings. To my knowledge, they have absolutely nothing to do with Christmas (OK, maybe the pig is an angel). I really, really want these for my lawn.
I really don’t mind Christmas, but the wife loves it. Honestly, if I let her she’d start with the decorations right now. Our compromise is the day after Thanksgiving can be Christmas time. We’ve actually made a tradition out of it: Each day after Thanksgiving we watch “Elf” and “The Muppet Christmas Carol” and go down to the store and pick out one Christmas cd.
But not a single light goes up before then. I also refuse to buy anything before the designated time. Every time I go into the store she has to listen to me bitch about how they should not be selling Christmas things while I’m buying Halloween candy.
But for those who still celebrate Advent as a religion season (Catholics, Orthodox Christians, and several of the traditional Protestant denominations among them), the point is to prepare for Christmas, not celebrate it.
I grew up Catholic and, while everybody knew that no one was going to wait until December 24th to decorate their home, at least in church Christmas didn’t start until then. During Advent, we sang Advent hymns not Christmas carols; the nativity scene was set up but the manger was empty; and the scripture readings and sermons focused on forseeing and preparing for the birth of Jesus, not on the birth itself. Christmas began with the Vigil Mass on the evening of the 24th and lasted until the Sunday after Epiphany (January 6th, the Wise Men visiting and all that). Don’t blame the commercialism on Advent - Advent is innocent!
